t last sunset seen in Paradise,
When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,
All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God
Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour
The lady of the world, princess of life,
Mistress of feast and favour? _Could I touch
A Rose with my white hand, but it became
Redder at once?_

Another poet. (Mr. C. Cooke) tells us that a species of red rose with
all her blushing honors full upon her, taking pity on a very pale
maiden, changed complexions with the invalid and became herself as white
as snow.

Byron expressed a wish that all woman-kind had but one _rosy_ mouth,
that he might kiss all woman-kind at once. This, as some one has rightly
observed, is better than Caligula's wish that all mankind had but one
head that he might cut it off at a single blow.

Leigh Hunt has a pleasant line about the rose:

And what a red mouth hath the rose, the woman of the flowers!

In the Malay language the same word signifies _flowers_ and _women_.

Human beauty and the rose are ever suggesting images of each other to
the imagination of the poets. Shakespeare has a beautiful description of
the two little princes sleeping together in the Tower of London.

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk
That in their summer beauty kissed each other.

William Browne (our Devonshire Pastoral Poet) has a _rosy_ description
of a kiss:--

To her Amyntas
Came and saluted; never man before
More blest, nor like this kiss hath been another
But when two dangling cherries kist each other;
Nor ever beauties, like, met at such closes,
But in the kisses of two damask roses.

Here is something in the same spirit from Crashaw.

So have I seen
Two silken sister-flowers consult and lay
Their bashful cheeks together; newly they
Peeped from their buds, showed like the garden's eyes
Scarce waked, like was the crimson of their joys,
Like were the tears they wept, so like that one
Seemed but the other's kind reflection.

Loudon says that there is a rose called the _York and Lancaster_ which
when, it comes true has one half of the flower red and the other half
white. It was named in commemoration of the two houses at the marriage
of Henry VII. of Lancaster with Elizabeth of York.

Anacreon devotes one of his longest and best odes to the laudation of
t